Strategy
Tactics and Tips Trading * Your Ego modifier determines prices you buy and sell for. Wear Ego-increasing gear when trading. * Traders can always charge your energy cells for drams of water © key * Some NPCs can repair ® and identify gear (I). They can then identify items that you haven't bought either. The merchant in Grit Gate is like this, which is very useful. * Four drams of water weighs one pound (lb). Anything that is worth less per pound, will lighten your burden if you trade it for water. Always try to trade for denser valuables. * Watch the weight number in the lower right corner when you select an item to buy. The difference tells you what the item weighs (even if unidentified). * Try to remember where you met wandering dromad traders, so that you can revist them when they restock their inventory. (In the current version of the game, you can drop an item (like an arrow) on the world map to mark the location. I guess this quirk will be fixed at some point) * Wandering dromads come with different levels, which is apparent in the level of wares they are trading. Do especially remember the high level traders so that you can revisit them. Six Day Stilt * You can trade in books for XP with the librarian. Use this to turn excess money into XP by buying books. More expensive books give better return per dram. * If there's a schematics trader at the stilt market, it will refresh its inventory regularly, the others don't. * You may attack non-mechanimist aligned NPCs at the stilt market, for example arconauts, without angering mechanimists. Caves (Underground) * A disconnected part of a dungeon is mostly filled with webs, water and no monsters, but they have a greater chance than usual of spawning gold nuggets, jewels and other loot, so it may be worthwhile to dig into disconnected caverns if you can. * Look for humanoid corpses (charred corpse, mouldering corpse, fresh corpse etc). These piles may contain books, armor, weapons, artifacts. At great depths, they will always have very valuable gear. * Be aware of what monsters may turn up at a given depth level. Stay above if you can't handle them. ** Approximately: (Values change depending on world map location) *** Rhinox Level 15 *** Great Magma Crab Level 22 *** Leering Stalker Level 24 *** Chrome Pyramid Level 29 * Night-vision goggles or the night vision cybernetics implant are very valuable for survival, because they allow you to see far through the cave * Use guaranteed stairs to descend to specific depths in the underground. ** From Red Rock, you can get into Underground Level 4 by descending. Same with Rust Wells. ** From Grit Gate, you can get into Underground Level 20 by descending the stairs inside the compound ** From the Asphalt Mines, you can descend as deep as you want, then dig out to get into the Underground ** If you enter a space-time vortex, you may end up anywhere. It is common to end up deep underground (Level 25-30). Factions * A game-wide plan for which factions to become friendly with is helpful. Some factions are better to be friendly with, depending on what you want to do ** Robots: Rocket Turret, Leering Stalker and Chrome Pyramid ** Crabs: Rhinox and Great Magma Crab ** Tortoises: Great Saltback (docile) ** Mollusks: Ickslug ** Fish: Sewage Eels and Twinning Lamprey * Use the Offer Gift skill on friendly legendary monsters to increase or decrease your standings with factions. * Choose to kill/not kill legendary creatures depending on the faction relations you want to accomplish * Use schrödinger pages XP * Past their level, monsters give less XP per kill. Here's a couple of good places to find XP later in the game (before or around the stated level), if you are equipped to handle them. ** Level 10, Waydroids in the Grit Gate, 250 XP (toss the droid scrambler before entering a zone). ** Level 21, Slumberlings in any underground or below ruins, 525 XP ** Level 27, Madpoles in the River Svy and other rivers. 270 XP ** Level 42, Great Magma Crabs in Asphalt Mines Level 26 and below, 1050 XP Asphalt Mines * There are nine mine shafts (one in each zone of the 3x3 asphalt mine tile). You can dig to the others from the central shaft. * You can go very deep in the mines, then dig out into the underground; this is a guaranteed way to get very deep in the underground (if you can handle the asphalt mines by either faction alignments or just might). Bethesda Susa * There are many sparkling baetyls in this cave, so do write down their locations and requests, in case you can fulfill them Frozen * You can still use abilities and mutations when frozen * You can use tonics while frozen * You can equip items while frozen, including equipping items that give you more cold resistance (you may thaw quicker this way) * You can pour a dram of water on yourself to become unfrozen. Category:Guides